


Finding happiness when there is no sun

by Melime



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Depression, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24824563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: When she was young, she thought that nature would simply reflect how she was feeling.
Relationships: Leliana/Female Surana (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 4





	Finding happiness when there is no sun

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Encontrando a felicidade quando o sol não brilha](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24824572) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> Femslashfeb's [2018 Prompt Table](https://femslashfeb.tumblr.com/post/169486708676/any-world-any-medium-as-long-as-theres-girl), day 24 - weather.

When Neria was young, she used to think that she could control the weather.

Not because she was a mage, she would never presume to have that level of power, after all, powerful beings don’t stay locked away in a prison. It was why she didn’t believe the Chantry when they said mages had to be locked away before their power was dangerous, if they were as dangerous as the Chantry said, they would never have stayed locked away.

No, she thought that nature would simply reflect how she was feeling, and pondered if perhaps it was like this for everybody.

Later, she would think that it was the other way around, that the weather was the sole dictator of her feelings, a greater influence than anything else that happened to her.

In the Circle, her feelings were like the weather, distant, dull, irrelevant.

Rain was something that made noise when hitting the windows and winter would bring cold winds to the corridors and turn the walls even colder to the touch, an inconvenience, just as her sadness was nothing more than coldness inside and the silent noise of muffled tears. The sunny days were few and far between, the warmth of the sun couldn’t reach them inside the tower and even the brightness could only be seen in a handful of rooms, just as her joy was fleeting and its warmth would never truly reach her heart.

For someone who was locked away, who had been locked away for longer than she could remember, her feelings were as irrelevant as the weather. Neither could touch her there, there wasn’t much of a point to either, there could be no happiness in a place the sun wouldn’t touch.

And then she left her prison, not as a free person, a city elf was never truly free, and a mage could only exist in captivity, servitude, or hidding, so someone who was born as both could never hope for freedom.

She left her prison, and was finally able to experience the world, only under the rules of her servitude, but the world just the same.

And the world and her were still as connected as ever. Her feelings were the weather and the weather was her feelings.

Since she left the Circle, all she knew was the cold, damp weather. The rain was almost constant, even if often weak, and the skies were always so dark, so bleak, even as the sun shined, not bright, but dull. It was how she felt, not quite sad, or at least not desperately so, but always in the cold side of average, with any hope of improvement being as dull and weak as the sun.

But then she met Leliana, bright and warm as Neria always imagined the sun to be. Leliana warmed her heart, and little by little brought back the joy that long ago had been stolen away from her. Leliana was her sun, not always present, not always able to warm a cold day after an even colder night, not always visible through the rain, but always close even when she was away, and always returning regardless of any absences.

Leliana wasn’t the solution to everything, and wasn’t properly a replacement to the sun that Neria never met, but she was the one that proved to Neria that there was more to feelings than the weather she knew, and that joy could exist even when the sun refused to shine.


End file.
